[04/xtend]
[Team]
Amelie Schlüter
Tim Bluthardt
[Duration]
Winter 23/34
Three Months
[My Role]
Concept, User Testing, Protoyping, Renderings
Our goal with this project was to design and develop a controller to easily navigate a robot to push Jenga blocks out of a Jenga tower.
The first phase of the project focused on getting an idea of how physical interfaces present different challenges than digital interfaces. We needed to get an idea of how affordance can allow users to understand which button triggers which function.
Thanks to special wheels, the robot has the ability to move not only forward and backward, but also sideways and rotate around its own axis. Our Idea was to control each level of freedom of the robot with one finger.
[03/Axis]
We developed these interactions to control the robot. To rotate it, press the joystick and move it left or right, all controlled by the thumb. Vertical arm movement is managed by back buttons, arranged for easy index-finger control. Arm extension and laser activation are handled by the Xtend button, a two-phase control operated with the middle finger, inspired by a camera shutter.
[04/ Test]
Through user testing, we discovered that the Xtend button was only being used during the first phase of operation. To address this, we added indicator lights on top of the controller to provide feedback to the user about their current state in the process.
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We arrived at this final design
